by Ben Rehder
Tuco purred loudly and Maria smiled. She remembered the day last week when Tuco had saved Maria from Mr. Mameli’s groping hands. Mr. Mameli had come to Maria’s cottage while Mrs. Mameli was taking a bath. He climbed on top of her, but before he could complete his filthy act, Tuco jumped on his back and hissed. Mr. Mameli shrieked like a small girl, pulled on his clothes, and left the cottage, careful to avoid the cat. He appeared to be afraid of Tuco, and that made Maria giggle.
There were times when Maria became so depressed she wanted to return to her home in Quetzaltenango, to forget her dreams and accept the life she had been given. After all, what chance did she have as an illegal alien? She had always hoped to fall in love with a wonderful American man, raise a family, and then, when the time was right, go to college. She wanted to be a doctor. She felt she had a healing heart, and that a career in medicine was her destiny. Her amigas back home had laughed when she told them that. Maybe they were right; perhaps it was silly. After all, she had been in the United States for two years now. She was twenty-three years old, and she felt that time was slipping away.
When Maria got this way-a heavy feeling in her heart-she often meditated. She would light candles, play some soothing music, and sit peacefully on the floor.
Weak batteries saved Emmett Slaton’s life. He was five yards away from Vinnie, playing the light all around the cedars, but the beam was apparently too faint for the old man to pick Vinnie out through the thick, low branches.
“Aw, to hell with you,” Slaton grumbled. “Stay out here all night and see how you like it.” The old rancher retreated toward the house and Vinnie’s nerves began to settle down. After a few moments, he heard the front door close, and he finally released his grip on the cold steel of the.38.
CHAPTER NINE
When John Marlin woke up Tuesday morning, his brain was pounding against his skull and he felt as if he had little individual sweaters on each of his teeth. Now he remembered why he didn’t hit the bourbon too often. It was five A.M., but he just couldn’t sleep any longer. So he walked to the end of his driveway and grabbed the newspaper.
Back inside, he was greeted with a front-page headline that blared, ACTIVIST BREWS UP BIG TROUBLE. Marlin chuckled. The story-another piece by Susannah Branson-recounted the coffee-throwing episode of the morning before. It stated that Inga Mueller, a Minnesotan, was being held on a variety of charges, including assaulting an officer.
Near the bottom, Inga was quoted: “I’m just trying to draw attention to the plight of the red-necked sapsucker. It’s an endangered species, but nobody seems to care. They live only in cedar trees, so we need to stop cutting the cedars before it’s too late.” Well, at least Inga was getting the ink she wanted. Marlin was surprised Susannah hadn’t called him for a quote. She must have gotten everything she needed from the police report.
Marlin glanced through the rest of the paper, then took a hot shower, swallowed a couple of aspirin, and headed out the door.
He wasn’t going anyplace in particular, just cruising. He stopped at a few meat lockers-places that typically opened at sunrise to accommodate hunters-to check the quality of the deer brought in so far. The drought in the spring had been tough on the regional deer population, but they seemed to be rebounding nicely. Marlin saw several nice bucks, with antler spreads hovering around the twenty-inch mark. Couple of nice does, too, much fatter than he had expected. Seeing a healthy deer herd always put Marlin in a good mood. Animals often had to struggle against the cruel whims of Mother Nature, so it was nice to see the deer thriving.
At nine-thirty, Jean, one of the dispatchers from the Sheriff’s Department, came over the radio with a report of a poacher at Pedernales Reservoir. The park was closed on selected dates during deer season, to give hunters access, but today the park was open to the public.
Marlin swung his cruiser east and wheeled through the park entrance in less than six minutes. Driving through the camping area, he spotted a young man skinning a five-foot rattlesnake that was hanging from an oak tree. A rifle leaned against a nearby Nissan truck. Marlin asked the young man for his driver’s and hunting licenses, and everything came back clean. The man told him the snake had almost bit his dog, and that he was concerned about letting the snake go when there were families around. Marlin sensed he was telling the truth.
“What’re you skinning him for? Gonna make a hatband?” Marlin asked.
“Naw, I just want the meat. Might fry it up for lunch. You can have the skin if you want it.”
Marlin liked the young man’s answer. So he was polite, but firm: He told the offender that firearms were not allowed in the park, and killing any type of animal on the premises was against the law. In the end, Marlin wrote him a citation for possession of a firearm within the park boundaries. He could have been much tougher, arresting the young man and confiscating his rifle, a cheap bolt-action.22.
The remainder of the morning was slow, so Marlin headed back home for lunch at twelve-thirty. While eating a sandwich, he noticed the light blinking on his answering machine. He hit PLAY.
“Yeah, John, this is Lester Higgs. I got something out here, and uh, well, I don’t want to get into it over the phone, but I really need to see you right away. It’s about eleven-thirty and I’ll be here at the house for a few minutes. But I’ve got to head back to the southern property line and you can find me there, near the back pasture. It’s urgent, John. You’ll understand when you get here.”
Lester Higgs was a Blanco County native, about Marlin’s age, now foreman of the Hawley Ranch, a large hunting operation. People called the game warden all the time with “urgent” problems, but Lester’s tone told Marlin he’d better return the call right away. Marlin knew Lester to be a man who wasn’t easily ruffled. Many years ago, Marlin had seen Lester get kicked in the head by a horse during a rodeo. Lester went to his truck, stitched the wound himself, then rode a bull an hour later. Lester wasn’t the type to call the game warden every time he heard a late shot or saw a spotlight in an oat field after dark. Marlin dialed Lester’s number but got no answer. He grabbed his sandwich and headed out the door.
Fifteen minutes later, Marlin arrived at the gate of the Hawley Ranch. There were no vehicles at the foreman’s quarters, so Marlin navigated the rutted dirt roads to the heavily wooded back pasture. He passed a red late-model SUV on the side of the road, rounded a curve, and spotted Lester’s white truck along the fenceline. Marlin parked beside it.
Marlin shut his truck door and immediately heard Lester calling to him from behind a dense curtain of cedars. A tall deer blind loomed over the treetops.
Marlin came through the trees and found Lester just yards away, squatted on his haunches with his dirty Stetson in his hands. In front of him was a body.
Five summers ago, Emmett Slaton had been in the drive-through at the local bank when he’d glanced over at the parking lot of the grocery store next door. He noticed a rough-looking couple sitting on the tailgate of a jacked-up yellow truck. The man was dressed in a leather Harley-Davidson cap and a matching vest with no shirt underneath. The woman wore a green bikini top and greasy blue jeans. On her left biceps was a tattoo of a penis and a caption that read Born To Ride. Between them was a cardboard box that read, FREE PUPIES. Apparently, they were down to the last pup in the litter, a wormy-looking black-and-brown runt that lay panting on the hot pavement at their feet.
The biker hoisted the puppy up into the bed of the truck and shoved a bowl of water in front of it. When the puppy went to drink, the man slid the bowl out of its reach. The puppy tried again, and the man moved the bowl once more. After three or four attempts, the puppy lay down with its head between its paws. The man picked up the puppy by the scruff of its neck and gave it a good shake, as if scolding it for giving up so easily. With his free hand, the biker roughly jabbed the puppy’s belly.
Slaton had seen all he needed to see. He wheeled his Ford out of the bank line and pulled in next to the yellow truck. He grabbed a tire iron from behind his sea
t and held it beside his leg as he approached the man in the vest.
“Son,” Slaton said, “don’t you know you shouldn’t treat an animal that way?”
The biker glanced at Slaton, then gave the woman an exaggerated, I can’t believe this shit expression. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m Emmett Slaton, and I believe I’ll take that dog off your hands.”
The biker looked down at the dog. “This’n here? Gonna cost you a hunnert bucks.”
“Your box says it’s free.”
“Yeah, they was free to the general pop’lation, but for assholes, they’s a hunnert bucks.”
Slaton reached down to pick up the dog and the biker grabbed his arm in an alarmingly strong grip.
Slaton brought the tire iron down fast and hard and felt the bones give way in the biker’s arm. “Son of a bitch!” the biker yelled and laid down in the bed of the truck, bringing his knees up to protect himself from another blow.
“Now, there,” Slaton said. “That’s how you treat an animal.” He glanced over at the woman, who smiled coolly and exhaled a mouthful of cigarette smoke. She gestured at the dog. “He’s all yours.”
Sitting on his front porch Tuesday afternoon, Slaton remembered that afternoon as if it were yesterday. He had nursed the puppy to good health, and it became a strong, confident dog. For five years, Patton had been his companion, his best buddy, right there by his side day and night. Slaton loved that ornery old mutt, even if he didn’t always come when he was called.
Slaton was heartsick. He had hung around the house all morning, even canceling a doctor’s appointment in San Antonio, waiting to hear the familiar yip at the front door. But it never came. If Patton didn’t show up by sundown, Emmett Slaton just didn’t know what he was going to do.
It was one o’clock now, and Slaton got into his truck to take a slow drive along the county road near his home.
About goddamn time, Vinnie said to himself as Emmett Slaton pulled out of his driveway. Vinnie had been waiting and watching from the same cluster of cedar trees he had hidden in the night before. He grabbed the Hefty bag off the ground and proceeded toward the house. He couldn’t help but grin. His dad would love the poetic symbolism of the act Vinnie was planning. It was pure genius, that’s what it was.
He tried the back door, found it unlocked, and quickly made his way to the master bedroom.
Emmett Slaton returned from his drive feeling worse than ever. No sign of Patton. That damn dog was going to give him more gray hairs than he already had.
Slaton went to the kitchen, hoping to find new messages on his answering machine. He had left word with area kennels, veterinarians, and the county dogcatcher-asking them all to be on the lookout-but the red light stubbornly refused to blink.
Slaton fixed a bourbon on the rocks and went to his den. He flipped the TV on but couldn’t get interested in any of the programs.
He decided to go take a little nap, to give himself plenty of energy to continue his search later that evening.
At his bedroom doorway, he noticed the door was closed. Strange, he thought. He never shut that door because the room got too hot if he did.
He swung the door open and cautiously flipped the light switch. Everything looked normal. Nothing out of place. “Getting paranoid,” he muttered. “Either that or Alzheimer’s.”
He sat on the edge of the bed to pull his boots off, then stood and peeled off his shirt and jeans.
He tugged the blanket back and came face-to-face with a bloody nightmare. He didn’t even realize he was screaming. There, in his bed, was the severed head of his beloved Patton.
Slaton gingerly picked up the head and clutched it to his chest, his screams now subsided to a low moaning wail. He staggered into the bathroom-he didn’t really know why-and placed the head in the sink. He began rinsing it off, watching the blood swirl down the drain.
Even in his grief, the gears in his mind were frantically spinning. The head in the bed-I’ve seen this before, he thought. What was it? A movie?
Then he had it. The Godfather. The scene where the Hollywood producer wakes up in bed with the head of his prize stallion.
The anger-the pure, unadulterated fury-built in Slaton’s heart as it never had before. This was no subtle message. It was designed to taunt him, to tell him exactly who did it. And he received that message loud and clear. Cradling the sopping head of his dog in his arm, Slaton turned to retrieve his.45 automatic from his nightstand.
CHAPTER TEN
“Lester, you all right?” Marlin asked, carefully eyeing the wooded area around him. A man was down, and at this point Marlin didn’t know why. Common sense-and law enforcement savvy-told him to approach the situation with caution.
“I’m okay, John,” Lester said, standing up. “But this ol’ boy ain’t doing good at all. I woulda called for an ambulance or somethin’, but it’s too late for that. I started to wait for your call at the house, but I figured I’d better come on back down here, keep the buzzards away.”
Marlin looked for footprints in the area, didn’t see any, and carefully stepped up beside Lester. He gazed down at the dead man and saw a familiar face.
The man was on his back, his head tilted to one side, eyes open but unseeing. Marlin noticed lividity-pooled blood-in the cheek closest to the ground, while the other cheek was white as a newborn’s butt. No need to even take a pulse; the man was long gone. A rifle lay by his side and the center of his camouflage jacket was dark with blood. His hands, too, were covered with dried blood.
“Bert Gammel,” Lester said dryly. “One of my hunters. I figure it was a stray shot that got him. Either that, or he somehow managed to shoot hisself.”
Marlin didn’t reply, but eyed the apparent entry wound. Dead center in the chest. Very unlikely that it was self-inflicted, even accidentally. Keeping his feet in place, Marlin bent low over Gammel’s rifle, trying to catch a scent of cordite, but there was none. It didn’t mean the rifle hadn’t been fired, but Marlin’s intuition told him it hadn’t.
“Did you move the body?” Marlin asked.
“Naw, just felt for a pulse. Gave me the willies, to tell the truth.”
Marlin stood and said, “Lester, I want you to step over here with me for a minute and answer a few questions. If you can, try to walk back to your truck the same way you walked in.” Marlin knew that Lester, even as tough as he was, would think more clearly if he wasn’t staring at a corpse. Also, Marlin had to protect what might be a crime scene.
Before questioning Lester, Marlin radioed the dispatcher and asked for assistance. Before long, the area would be swarming with personnel, including the sheriff, deputies, and the medical examiner.
With help on the way, Marlin grabbed a pen and notepad and turned to Lester, but the ranch foreman didn’t have much to tell. Lester said that he kept a spiral notebook at his house; hunters were supposed to sign in and out when coming and going from the ranch. Lester said that Gammel had hunted yesterday afternoon but had never signed out. It happened all the time. Hunters simply forgot, or didn’t want to bother with stopping at the foreman’s quarters on the way out.
When Lester came down this morning to repair a hole in the southern fence, he saw Gammel’s vehicle. He scouted the area, found the body, and immediately called Marlin. “I didn’t want to call the sheriff’s office just yet, John. Small town, you know, and I didn’t want to start a bunch of rumors. I knew you’d handle it right.”
Gammel was an employee with the county Public Works Department, a well-known figure around town. If word got out that he was found dead, the entire population would know by the end of the day.
“Did you hear any shots yesterday afternoon?” Marlin asked.
“A couple.”
“Can you remember what time?”
“I think there was one at about four o’clock, another at around five or five-fifteen, and then one more right before dark.”
“A little after six?”
“Yeah, I guess. There
abouts.”
“Did any of the shots sound like they came from this direction?”
“The last one did. I figured it was probably Gammel, but I checked the notebooks and they didn’t show that he had killed anything.” The foreman was required to keep a second notebook that listed the date and time when all deer were killed on the ranch. “That’s when I noticed that he hadn’t signed out. Figured he forgot.”
“What time did he sign in yesterday afternoon?”
“Three o’clock.”
“Did you see him come in?”
“Yeah, he waved at me over at the barn. I was feeding the horses.” The ranch owners, the Hawleys, kept several quarter-horses on the property, coming out occasionally on weekends to ride. But they rarely showed during deer season.
“Was there anybody with him?”
“Nope.”
“Were any of the other hunters out here yesterday?”
“Jack Corey was here. Signed in at three-twenty; out at six-thirty. Didn’t shoot nothin’. But I never saw him, just what it says in the notebooks.”
Marlin gestured toward the neighboring property across the fenceline. “That’s the Bar T. They doing any hunting over there nowadays?”
“Not that I’ve heard of. Hasn’t been hunted in ten years.”
“You haven’t heard any shots from over there, or seen any hunters?”
“Not a one. I see the foreman on occasion. Sometimes we shoot the breeze over the fence for a while. Saw him a week or ten days ago. He didn’t say nothin’ about opening it to hunters this year. And if they had, I’m sure me or you woulda heard about it.”